The Afterparty: Refactoring After 100x Hypergrowth

PicPay is the largest digital wallet in Latin America. We offer peer-to-peer payments, BNPL, credit cards, personal loans, insurance, investing, trading, and other financial products to 60 million people and 5 million merchants, processing over $20 billion yearly. 

But just three years ago, in 2019, PicPay was 30 engineers in a small office working on a single product for a few million users. Growing our product portfolio, team size, and the number of transactions by several orders of magnitude so quickly was as chaotic as you might imagine—but we've done it!

Our approach gave teams and engineers radical autonomy to choose the best tool, process, and technology for their area. This strategy was invaluable in handling hypergrowth, but as we stabilize as a business and product, we have realized that what took us here isn't what will keep us moving forward. 

In this talk, let's explore the consequences of how we dealt with our hypergrowth phase and what are the changes and initiatives we have put in place to make sure that we keep growing and pushing the envelope—but at a manageable pace this time around.